The Review

Editor’s Summary

When you imagine a fetish dating website, you might think of a scary den of Internet iniquity full of untrustworthy characters. FetLife isn’t like that at all. In fact, it’s an incredibly nice website -- a very supportive community of people who are into weird sex stuff and aren’t shy about it. If you’re into exploring corners of your sexuality that you previously haven’t, or if you can’t get your kinky fix from other dating websites, FetLife is definitely worth your time.

Signing up for FetLife is a quick process. The only step that takes any time at all is an SMS confirmation stage -- you have to punch in a confirmation code sent to your phone. This is good, though: This extra step probably screens out a lot of bots. Once you’re done that, you can add as much or as little information to your profile as you’d like, and start joining groups, which are the real engine that drive FetLife.

FetLife isn’t a streamlined, algorithm-driven dating site, like Tinder or OKCupid. It’s more of a social community. You join discussion groups, make friends with other users, and post public blog entries as well as private messages on your wall. The site also generates a feed showing you the activities of users you follow. This Facebook-like approach might frustrate you if you’re just looking to log on and instantly match up with a bunch of singles. But it really makes sense given that FetLife is a site that connects you to communities of people who are into really specific stuff. If you’re the type of person who specifically wants to participate in leather play in a private dungeon, you can find the dungeon people and have friendly chats with them before leaping into an exotic setting.

The amazing thing about FetLife is the supportiveness of the community. The tone is almost universally positive. Post a picture of yourself in stockings and you’ll get endless compliments. Write a blog post about your fantasies and you’ll get fun responses. This is a site for freaky people who can’t indulge their tastes in public, and thus are very happy when they can find outlets for their passion on a private social network. It’s a world away from places like Match.com, where the general attitude is “prove you’re good enough.”

FetLife is super accepting. The only quirk is that a lot of users don’t have publicly available photos of their faces. But this is understandable, given that you don’t necessarily want your neighbors to accidentally find out that you have a urine fetish, or something else usually considered unusual.

And since the user base is extremely large -- the site is frequented by millions of people -- you can probably find whatever you’re looking for. For example, let’s say you’re in Texas for a week and you want to get spanked. Well, there’s a specific group for spanking people in Texas, and you can find some friendly people who can help you with that. And this stuff really works. If you’re browsing any given message thread in a popular group, chances are, you’ll see people connecting over their fetishes and moving to private messaging. Once you make that jump yourself, you’ll find that one-to-one connection is managed much like on Facebook: you friend someone and then gain access to their wall, as well as non-public pictures. Individual messaging looks just like email.

One of the few drawbacks of the site is that it’s very old-fashioned in terms of design. It’s not that it’s difficult to navigate, it’s just that it’s more like a site from the early 2000s than other dating websites. The aesthetic is pretty text-heavy. It almost reminds you of Craigslist, or a non-dating-related forum site. This presents a bit of a learning curve if you’re used to OkCupid.

One fun part is that if you’re just bored and want something to look at, there are a lot of public blogs that are essentially amateur porn sites. By hitting the “kinky and popular” button, you can instantly browse a Tumblr-style windowpane display of all the most popular blogs. It’s a great way to see a well-curated section of homemade naughty content.

Finally, FetLife is exceptional in that 90% of the site’s functionality is accessible for free, and trial members aren’t harassed with a lot of advertising. Only the video-based content is inaccessible to non-paid users.If you’d like to see the videos—and there are a lot of them—paid memberships are only $5, a reasonable sum. As well, paid members are given a few extra options, like the ability to access archival content that was posted on their user feed a long time ago.

FetLife offers an excellent user experience. It’s a warm community that’s easily browsed. You won’t find anything like it on other major online dating sites. If you’re looking for a Tinder alternative, this is not the right place—really taking advantage of FetLife’s opportunities requires significant engagement with the community. However, put the time in, and you’ll find whatever esoteric variety of pleasure you’re looking for.

IN DEPTH

Sign-Up Process

The only unusual part of signing up for FetLife is that it requires a phone -- the site sends you a verification text message with a code you must enter before you proceed. During signup, the site prompts you to list your kinks and fetishes, which it uses to automatically suggest groups you might want to join, and users you might want to follow. After that brief process, you’re equipped with a free membership, with which you can access the vast majority of the site’s content -- everything except videos. If you’d like to see the videos, it’s only $5.

Members & Messaging

One of the most appealing aspects of FetLife is the absolutely massive user base. There’s a fascinatingly diverse range of ages and sexual interests. People range from curious newcomers to the kink world to professional dominatrixes with their own private dungeons. Once you add someone as a friend, messaging them works just like email.

Key Features

- Public blogs offer lots of free pornographic content made by the users

Safety & Security

FetLife is very secure. It doesn’t sell any of its users’ information to third parties, even macro stuff like browsing data, so what you search for on FetLife won’t affect what ads you’re served on other websites. Like most other social networking sites, however, they collect aggregate statistics on user engagement to measure the effectiveness of new features. All user communications are SSL-encrypted. They won’t give out your details, even to law enforcement, unless they’re served with a court order. For more information, check out the privacy policy.

Noteworthy

The site had even more groups than it currently does, until January 2017, when the administrators deleted any groups related to blood, needles, rape, or incest, understandably enough. The Guardian reports that after the release of 50 Shades of Grey, fetish websites became much more popular, which prompted many long-time users to create more private communities.

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